Work of Art (26 page)

I sat down next to Ryan
with my leg tucked under me so I was facing him. He set the pictures down after a few minutes and turned to me. In that moment, I think we both decided without saying it that we needed a break from being sad. The pain never left you, but if you didn’t force yourself not to feel it, it could cripple you. And I think Ryan was realizing that.

He watched me for a few moments, as he rested his elbow on the back of the couch and his head on his hand. I didn’t like how he was making me feel. It was scary and dangerous and unfamiliar since I’d closed myself off to men – at least emotionally – long ago.

“Tell me everything about you,” he finally said. “What have I missed in the past decade? Tell me about your art and your shop and the men you’ve dated and your friends. Tell me everything.”

He’d caught me off-guard with that request, but he was looking at me so expectantly that I just started talking, telling him the story of how I’d gotten started in the tattoo business, how I’d been an apprentice, how I’d painted on the side and started selling my art to galleries. I tol
d him about my dad and Kelly and Julian and Devin and the people I worked with, because he was listening to my every word with such attention that I felt I needed to be open and honest, and I usually wasn’t open with people. But Ryan was the guy who’d opened my heart in the first place, so it was only fitting that I let him back in.

“What about boyfriends?”

I shook my head. “There haven’t been many. I didn’t date when I had Tyler, and even for a few years afterward. Julian or Kelly will set me up every now and then, but I haven’t met anyone worth spending my time with just yet.”

“What’s up with you and Brandon?”

“Nothing,” I answered automatically. “We’re just friends.”

“He’s a good guy. And you seem to get along really well.”

“I know, but he’s just a friend.”

Ryan
looked at my arm for a few beats and then reached out to finger one of my tattoos. I had five butterflies on each arm, all different colors and styles, and he examined each of them.

“Twenty
-six. But only thirteen are visible if I’m wearing clothes. The others are on my back and stomach.”

I think he caught a glimpse of the tattoo on the underside of my left wrist since he grabbed my hand and flipped it over. Then he squinted, as if trying to figure out what it was.

“It looks like a bullet with butterfly wings,” he said, looking up at me for confirmation.

“That’s exactly what it is. And it w
as one of the first tattoos I got because it reminded me of how I felt growing up. I was trapped in a life that didn’t make sense to me and I hated it, but I couldn’t break free. I read somewhere that’s sort of how Billy Corgan felt about his fame when Smashing Pumpkins made it big, and it resonated with me.”

Ryan
grinned. “You always did have a soft spot for Smashing Pumpkins.”

I returned his smile. “I did.
And you were always a freak about Green Day.”

“Still am,” he said, smiling wider.
“So, which one of your tattoos is your favorite?”

I pointed to the stars on my neck, and he reached out and fingered the trail extending from the back of ear and down my neck.
It wasn’t my favorite, but it was a close second. I had a tattoo on my hip of a T with the dates of Tyler’s life around it and a rosary entwined throughout that ran halfway down my thigh. It was my favorite, but I wasn’t ready to show it to Ryan.

“What do the stars
symbolize?”

“I get one every time I tattoo a celebrity,” I said, and his eyes got wide. “I’m kidding. They symbolize goodness and truth and also light in the darkness.”

He smiled. “I like that. Which one did you get last?”

I felt like we were playing twenty questions, but I lifted up my s
hirt to show him the song lyric I’d added just a month before that flowed around my bellybutton in script.

“We are
all misfits living in a world on fire?” he read.

I blushed. “
It’s a lyric from a Kelly Clarkson song. My best friend Julian is slightly obsessed with her, so he makes me listen to her albums whenever we’re in the car, and this song was off of her last album. It resonated with me.”

Ryan sighed. “I feel like a misfit sometimes.”

I laughed and dropped my t-shirt back down. “Who you? Mr. ‘button-down shirt, khaki pants wearing, golf playing, Porsche driving, banker’? No way.”

“I just told you an hour ago that I hate my job and my life. I don’t fit into it, and I never have, and I’m sick of trying.
Besides, I’d much rather have your car than mine.”

I smiled. “You’re not touching my Shelby.”

I had a vintage 1966 Shelby Mustang that my dad has restored for me a few years earlier. I loved it, and I never let anyone else drive it.

“But I can admire it from afar and hope to have
one of my own one day.”

“
That you can do,” I said before subtly circling back to the topic he’d now brought up twice, so I sort of figure he wanted to talk about it. He said in a joking way that he hated his life, but I knew how serious he was about what he was saying. “If that’s what makes you happy.”

I paused,
giving him the opportunity to tell me more if he wanted.

“I
honestly don’t do a lot of things that make me happy,” he said, taking the opportunity.

“Why not?”

He shrugged. “Because I have obligations, but I’m not so sure I want them anymore.”

“
So what do you want, Ryan?” I asked, really hoping he wasn’t going to start talking about his relationship.

If he told me he wanted to call off his wedding, I wasn’t even sure how to navigate through that. I’d be a good friend and talk to him, but it would be uncomfortable territory for me
.

“I want
to quit my job. I want to teach,” he said automatically.

“So why don’t you do it?”

“Familial pressure.”

“
Screw them. It’s what I did, and I’m fortunate that I got out alive.”

I was a
lso twenty-five thousand dollars poorer as of late, but it was a good trade-off for rarely having to interact with my mother for the past ten years.

He looked up at me, his blue eyes on fire as he appraised me carefully. “
You
seem happy, Harper.”

I nodded once. “I am happy, Ryan.
Very happy.”

Or as happy as I can be given what I’d lost.

I knew I’d never be one hundred percent whole again, but losing a child will do that to you. I could only hope to get most of the way there.

“I’m glad,
” he said, and he looked like he wanted to say something else, but something about the look on his face made me nervous.

So
I finished my beer and stretched my arms over my head. “It’s after one, and I’m exhausted. I think I’m going to go to bed. I have to pick Brandon up at the airport at like noon.”

Ryan laughed as he set his beer on the coffee table and stood up. “How is that I’ve known the guy for seven years, and you’ve knowing him for
a month, and you’re the one picking him up at the airport?”

I shrugged. “He likes me better.”

“It’s because you’re a hot chick,” he said, and I laughed.

Then he stood up and started to walk toward the front door.

“Ryan?” I called after him.

“Hmm?
” he asked, his hand on the doorknob.

I didn’t
know what it was, but I suddenly didn’t want him to go. Maybe it was guilt over telling him about Tyler and knowing that he’d be alone in his apartment with his fiancé out of town or maybe it was because he’d told me how unhappy he was. Or maybe, and I really didn’t want this to be the reason, but since I now knew he hadn’t left me all those years ago, the feelings I’d forced myself to ignore over the past few weeks had started to resurface, and I was afraid to let him walk out that door, knowing that the next time I saw him, everything would be different. He’d be with his fiancé, and he’d be getting married. And we’d never be in the place we were in – wherever that was – again.

“It’s late. Do
you just want to crash here?”

I shouldn’t have asked. I should have just let him leave.

“Ugh,” he groaned, as he ran his hand back through his hair, the exhaustion I knew he felt overtaking him. “That is so tempting, because I’m tired as hell, but I probably shouldn’t.”

“Okay,” I said, my heart sinking just enough to let me know I was in big trouble. “
I just figured I’d offer.”

I knew what he was thinking – e
x-girlfriend who wasn’t currently dating anyone inviting him to stay at her apartment seemed suspicious, but regardless of what I was feeling, I’d never try anything. I wasn’t about to ruin his relationship. I just wasn’t ready to say goodbye.

He gazed at me for a few seconds, as if contemplating my invite. “Are you sure it’s okay?”

“Absolutely, if you don’t mind the couch. I don’t have a guest room, but I’ll get you a sheet and a blanket and towels in case you want to take a shower in the morning, and if you’re here when I get up, I’ll make you breakfast.”

“
The couch is perfect,” he said, nodding once. “Thank you, Harper. This was a very unexpected night, and I’m glad you were here to talk me through it all. Just, thank you.”

He still seemed a little stunned which I guess
was to be expected.

I walked to the hall closet, pulled out what he needed to make a bed on the couch
, handed it to him and started to walk away, but he pulled me back into his arms. And when he did, there was no doubt in my mind that right there was exactly where I wanted to be.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, hugging me tight against his chest
, as I inhaled his clean, familiar, and oh so intoxicating scent. “I’m so proud of you for having the guts to raise Tyler on your own, and I know he was so loved because of you. Thank you for making up for me not being around.”

I pulled back and looked
up at him. “Ryan, don’t.”

“
Shh,” he said, as he placed his finger over my mouth. “Just let me be appreciative for this, okay? I know it wasn’t my fault I wasn’t there, but it doesn’t mean I don’t owe you so much for everything you did.”

I eyed him for a few seconds before nodding.

“Okay,” he said and removed his finger from my lips. He leaned down and pressed his lips to my cheek for a beat. “Goodnight, Harper.”

“Goodnight,” I
said softly, before I turned to walk back into my bedroom, the dull ache in my chest so familiar to me now.

I wanted to run back to his arms and bask in the warmth and safeness I felt there, if not because I felt closer to him now after everything we’d shared and the pain we jointly felt, but because I knew he needed someone too. He was going
through so much that I didn’t even understand, and I had a feeling he had no idea how to work through any of it.

I couldn’t imagine learning that your family had sabotaged your life so badly, and I couldn’t blame him if he carried through on his promise to cut them out if they were truly involved. Although it was hard to imagine him actually doing that since it sounded like he’d sacrificed a lot of his own happiness over the years to make them happy. Wouldn’t logic dictate that he’d continue down that path?

He valued his family’s opinions, and he’d shaped his life around what they’d wanted for him. And that was fine to a point, but he was taking it to an extreme with this wedding. I knew he didn’t want to get married, and if he went through with it, like I knew he would, he’d be making a huge mistake. I could tell he didn’t truly love his fiancé, and I’m not sure he realized it. Of course I’d have a front row seat for that mistake which I was pretty sure was a bad idea all around.

Chapter
Nineteen

Ryan

I lay there on Harper’s couch for what felt like hours, staring up at the ceiling and wondering how something so huge had happened in my life and I’d never known about it. I’d had a
son. For three brief years there had been someone in the world whose father was me. It was unfathomable, and it might take me years to truly wrap my head around the concept.

I’d thought for years that my reality was that my girlfriend had
an abortion, and I’d come to terms with that reality, but now learning that none of that was true was not something I ever expected to hear.

And the
n there was the email and the letter. Someone had created an email account that practically mirrored my own, and they’d taken the time to draft an email that sufficiently ended my relationship with the girl I’d loved. And then they’d drafted an email to Harper telling her the same thing, telling her that I wanted her to have an abortion. I’d seen the email. I’d held in my hands and hated that Harper had thought those words and those requests were mine.